Sect’y of Def. Jammed

One step, two steps, a misspeaking blogged all over the internet and you’re there. It’s almost time for the Secretary of Defense to scram.

The Abu Ghraib jam is a sword that must claim an Administration victim, and like the good captain, it could well be Rumsfeld. It might just be the big October Surprise and Kerry would be well advised to get ready to get what he wished, and just called, for.

These latest war-prisoner “atrocities” are most ironic, hovering between piquant and bittersweet, to all the old Vietnam protesters. It’s the week when the Right is about to attack Kerry, demanding that he own up to the terrible things he said to Congress, recounting the true stories he had been told of atrocities that took place in his war, as they do in all of them. Just as they do so today, in Iraq.

What would anyone expect of men and women put into a war zone? Not everyone, don’t be dim. But look on either side of you next time you’re on a bus or in a bar. Everyone there look like they’ll handle combat stress to you, bucko?

So the Swifties practice their denial of the weakness “all” flesh is heir to in combat passed, simultaneously with videotaped reality today (and the evidence for atrocities in Vietnam is there in dusty books should you want the real, not swiftly deceitful, truth). Truly a cognitive-dissonance whose pastiche tickles the tongue.

But enough of the review-speak. This is not a movie or a restaurant or a social event. This ghastly mess is about reality.

This is about whether the same old hypocrisy will get us that got the ones got stuck with the Empire before us. The hypocrisy of thinking that we can stem the ebb that follows empires flow any better than the last guys tried it. Xerxes commanding the incoming tide to halt (he was actually making the same point: that there was a limit to his power). Half-dozen Crusades. World Wars, ethnic slaughters.

Some were for nothing. Most, lamentably, were for causes that made sense, things having gotten to the state they had by that time. But how did this species, the “thinking one,” decide that this was the way to sort things out?

But to the present: Rumsfeld will take the fall. He was the gunsel, like in the Maltese Falcon. All tough, straight ahead, not a man capable of making a nice distinction. Captain of the ship. Last spot to stop the buck before it gets to the President.

We need someone who is tougher without a gun. The gumshoe-knight who can be hard, without being tough. Whose violence is a force that motivates others without degenerating into brutality, cruelty or even, most times, much physicality at all. Just tough talk, tough on the plan and how it’s best for everyone this way.

Or else…The velvet glove, we forgot it! Perhaps we were blinded to the whole glove thing because Michael has kinda made gloving so iconic for his celebrity brand.

Geopolitically, however, the glove around the fist is a far, far better way to be. Cheaper, too. The American way. Spare, direct, economical. Spoken softly.

And about that stick. Not spared, but used sparingly. You can spoil someone with too little. But beat a dog too much and you wind up with a junk-yard dog.

Which is fine if you want to run a junk yard. If you want to run a quiet, little, prosperous main street, mean dogs mean trouble. So it’s best not to train one, as they will maul someone eventually, unless you’re prepared to hunt, trap, catch and put them down.

Which is a lot of trouble. Plus, of course, plain mean and just wrong. Even a working dog deserves a life with some compassion.
¶ 6:15 AM